Touched by a Roleplayer

by Jason Gallagher

I am in a state of shock, still, after reading the profound statement made by Alex Kimball. Allow me to tell you my story.

Late night on June 31, 1999, I decided to catch up on some missed RPG Editorials. I read the ones about crazy people who think RPGs are pagan and how RPG sequels will begin to suck, but just as I was about to log off the net, I saw Mr. Kimball's aptly titled, "Some highly endearing comments from a previously unknown man about the foreseeable future of the online gaming market as a whole and other such ponderous quandries."

The statement that had laid it's tracks within was: Okay, stop complaining about games and maybe you will have fun with them.

Brilliant.

Never before had I seen just anger, just emotional toil in a piece of writing. It was then that a single tear rolled down my cheek.

I don't know what element of the editorial caused my outburst of wailing and weeping, but I cried myself to sleep that night. With tears of joy.

By the way, I'm laughing my patoot off as I write this.

Seriously, though. I thought the editorial (which looked like a phrase pulled randomly out of a RPG chat room) did hit the mark, and I think that people should really stop bashing the so-called "bad games."

SaGa Frontier, for instance. I rented the game, hoping that all the criticsms about it were wrong. I can't say that they weren't, but I looked at the beautifully rendered backgrounds and noticed that they failed to make it into the reviews that I read. Think how much hard work was put into games like Quest 64 and Saga Frontier. Maybe you'll appreciate them a little more.

And when FF Anthology is released in the US, people will rent it and people new to RPGs will say, "Why do these graphics look so old?" and get turned off by the SNES graphics. Final Fantasy V and VI are freaking good games!

So my point is the same as Alex's. Quit complaining and play the game for it's strong points. And if you don't like it, don't play it, or even talk about it.